We caught up with Microsoft Advertising's Richard Huggins to find out more about the company's plans for the Singapore market this year.
iMedia: What were some of the milestones for Microsoft Advertising last year?
Richard Huggins is regional sales director for Southeast Asia at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.Richard Huggins: Over the last 24 months, we significantly invested in MSN portal content, so much so that we are now the top portal in Singapore, according to comScore data. A lesser-known fact is that our sports channel is now No. 1 in Singapore too, with 175,000 unique users.
Our editorial team has worked hard to make our sports content relevant, a lot of which is driven by football, and the English Premier League, which remains ever popular amongst Singaporeans. Sport is a key area for both users and advertisers.
The trends that we're seeing cascade out of that. Our growth is fuelled across the region by the increase in internet penetration rates. Asia is going to eclipse the rest of the world in being the most important digital market, with four out of every 10 people online by 2012.
By 2011, there will be 212.6 million internet broadband users in Asia alone. In Singapore you've got 3.1 million -- and on Windows Live services, 2.16 million. So we have a very strong base here.
iMedia: What are some of Microsoft's new innovations around user targeting, rich media, etc.?
Huggins: We are continuing to invest in hierarchical targeting. That is what we're focused on and that's extremely efficient across the market.
We've also introduced a form of rich media called smart versioning, which is a dynamic rich media placement that can include pricing information. You will see some of this running soon, particularly in the technology and travel sectors where advertisers can, within a 24-hour period, lower their prices, for example. When an airline wants to do seat promotions, for instance, it can do that directly in the ad.
From an advertiser perspective, it's going to drive ROI and engagement with ads because there's a special offer or promotion which can be grabbed straight out of the ad.
iMedia: What is unique about the ways in which Singaporeans use IM platforms?
Huggins: Because of the proliferation of Messenger, people are using it in far more detail, and the time spent on it is increasing. A recent Windows Live Messenger survey showed that nine out of 10 Singaporeans said that they would use IM to ask someone out on a date. Through live sharing, you're giving someone a digital key to your life, to really understand what makes you tick, what sort of music you share.
From a business sense, IM is also enormously productive, with people in the workplace using IM to share documents and have quick conversations with their colleagues both locally and across the globe. According to the survey, almost 60 per cent of consumers said that IM increased productivity at work.
iMedia: How do these trends impact the way brands should be spending their ad dollars online?
Huggins: They need to spend a great deal more money online. All of the indications that I'm getting from our client base across the region is that digital is an essential, if not leading part of every marketing campaign now. Many agencies are now doing digitally-led pitches, because the brief that they're getting from clients is: We know we need to be going digital -- help us execute that.
The key challenge is digital education across the industry, having sufficient knowledge around the planning and buying of digital. We are engaged in a host of activities in the industry to grow that skill set -- we have the Microsoft Advertising Academy; we do a series of digital advertising workshops, and will be conducting creativity workshops as well. There are also very exciting initiatives across the industry from bodies like the IAB.
iMedia: What are your predictions for digital marketing in Asia this year?
Huggins: We see digital marketing growing by 27 percent in Southeast Asia this year. There will be three key areas for growth -- display media, search and ad networks.
We have our own ad network, with our owned and operated inventory, which means that advertisers can buy cost-effectively on it, and also have their ads run in a safe and secure environment.
We will continue to invest heavily in sports and lifestyle, as those are key areas that both advertisers and users want to be involved in. We are also looking at what really drives peoples' lives in each market. We know that the three big things for most Singaporeans are food, entertainment and sports. Recently, we launched a partnership with hungrygowhere.com to bring more food-related content to users' MSN homepages.
Our strategy for the entire region is around partnerships, working with other content creators to drive the right, relevant content. The game is not just about building social networks, it's about getting more contextually relevant and from that, driving better targeted solutions for advertisers to reach the right audience in the right space.
We're also looking for an uninterrupted online experience and we're enabling that by aggregating their internet experiences. For example, the Windows Live Essentials updates launched last year was a huge success, as it integrated people's social networks such as Twitter and Facebook into their Messenger. With people on so many social networks, we believe in the importance of simplifying consumers online worlds. That's one of the reasons why Messenger is still growing, because you don't need to jump from site to site.
The final piece of this jigsaw is around search. We will have a rapid rollout of Bing across all pertinent markets globally. We see search in the format that most search engines including Google has as Stage 1. We can help advertisers utilise search and improve the experience for users, as well as boost the ROI that search drives.
Marcel Lee Pereira is editor of iMedia Connection Asia.